A Gentle Destruction
by The Dewed Tulip
Summary: The fall of the Gentle Queen.   /One-shot/  /Extremely christian, but hey, if you had a problem with that, why would you be in this section of Fanfiction anyways?/


Author's Note: I do not own The Chronicles of Narnia and never will. This is my interpretation of Susan's fall.

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><p>The day that she finds herself once again in England in that fateful corner of that ordinary London train station and Lucy manages to pull her into a small compartment of a particular train, of that horridly bright maroon color which she has come to so despise, Susan Pevensie does not weep. Even as that high, piercing whistle sounds, the steam locomotive gives that horrible, beginning lurch forward and starts to chug into life, her eyes do not become moist as her facial features involuntarily seize up. As the realization hits, like a collision with a rather large, immovable brick wall, that she is leaving their brothers, who are standing still, ever so faithfully upon the drab, charcoal platform, she doesn't wave. As they are watching them go, with cheering smiles upon their faces and an indescribable look in their eyes, both noble blue and somber brown, the carefully restrained anguish and deep despair of world-wearied men far beyond their collective years of fourteen and eleven, the strangled cry hiding behind her lips does not escape. She doesn't look at her little sister when sobs start to wrack her tiny form and the puffs, the clouds of dirty smoke, finally obscure the faint forms of their beloved, fierce kings, magnificent and just in their own individual respects.<p>

No, she is too occupied in those words, the last he said, the ones that keep running through her head, a haunting mantra. She can still remember the moment her world shattered to pieces, the second that her dearest tore her soul asunder and broke her heart, the one that will always be filled with her kingdom, their Narnia.

"You must leave here, dear one. This place is not meant for you anymore. You are to depart from this land, Gentle Queen, never to return again."

"Why? Why would you ask such a thing of me?" she pleaded, with all the earnestness of her desperation. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No," he said, most gently and assuredly, in the best way that a lion really can. "I am not angry with you, beloved. It simply must be this way. Both, you as well as Peter, have grown much too old for this place. You have learned all that you can and are needed elsewhere now."

Susan fists the material of her grey, flannel, Saint Finnbar's, school skirt and knows that she would gladly suffer through a thousand more of those lesson-riddled perils, those unpredictable, harrowing adventures that are bound to happen when one is in that strange, wondrous world, than be separated from his presence, never again to hear that rich, hearty voice that used to shake the trees so that even the songbirds flew from their perches, trilling his praise, and warmed her to the bone like the strongest of sunbeams.

What is she to do now?

How is she to cope without him?

"Will I ever see you again?" she asked, in those last moments before leaving.

He let out a strange noise then, something between a purr and a roar, and she realized from the merry twinkling in those liquid, amber eyes that he was laughing.

"But, don't you see, dear one? I have always been with you, there was never a moment that you were without me. Why do you think that I should leave you now?"

It is all a lie, surely.

And how can her love be so cruel as to tell her such a thing?

She is so empty, so full of nothingness. There is such a frost in her heart which has laid waste to the beautiful summer, full of blooming flowers that she once held there, that he once gave to her.

How can he be beside her when she is suffering in such a way?

However, the words resound in her head with a voice in the back of her head that nags at her, never to forget. It is a small comfort, she doubted the promise and certainly does now, but still it is something to think on, a rock to cling to as she feels now that she is about to lose composure, forget all sense of self, and totally fall to pieces. Her youngest sister, their adored baby, has quieted slightly now and the only sound that pervades their enclosed section is the occasional sniffle or a heavy, shuddering breath, the kind of which only a nine year-old girl can make. Lucy's face is flushed, her cheeks soaked with the fresh wash of tears, and her nose a positive scarlet.

"Do you think we'll be roomed together when we get there?" she asks, through a considerably stuffed nose.

Susan has to stay strong, sensible now; someone needs to. After all, that _is_ what she is best at. She sighs and searches through her pockets for the linen hanky that she knows resides somewhere within. Taking it out, she crosses over to Lucy's side, sits beside her upon the purple seat cushion, and lays a firm hand upon her shoulder.

"Blow," she orders, holding it up to her face.

Lucy glances up at her, sheepishness replacing her sadness for the fraction of a second, and complies with the elder's wishes. Once having done this to Susan's satisfaction and her sister is creasing the cloth with more concentration than needed to slip it into the folds of her skirt once again, she catches her attention, the unanswered question still very much present in her mind. There is a hope, a faith in Lucy's eyes, that tugs at her heartstrings, whichever are still intact, and the love, that old, familiar feeling that she would slay a million giants to protect the person in front of her, rushes inside all at once. She kisses her temple softly and brings the distressed girl closer.

"No, darling. I don't think they will," Susan tells her quietly, holding to her fingers tightly.

Her expression falls immediately and she studies their hands with a new fixation.

"I'm scared, Susan," she confesses in the smallest of whispers.

Lucy seems lost, broken, in such a hopeless manner that it completely undoes the steel grasp upon her emotions. The Valiant is so brave, so sure about almost absolutely everything. It is she who found the wardrobe; she who showed them the way to their great Aslan. If she is faltering now, then they are all done for. She has the sudden, sharp longing for the dependable Peter, their leader and their High King.

"You have to look out for Lucy, all right?" he made her promise. "And look after yourself as well. I'll worry myself sick about you two, I hope you know."

What wouldn't she give to have them all together as one again? She can't do this on her own. She presses her forehead against her sister's and this time a single, fat teardrop rolls down her face and splatters upon her small hand.

"So am I."

* * *

><p>"Fancy skipping class, Su? We're meetin' a couple of boys from back round the Abbey."<p>

Susan looks up from her history textbook reluctantly, knowing whose eager freckled face would be expectantly staring back down at her. In the short two months that she has been attending Saint Finnbar's Boarding School for Young Ladies, she has made note of two things. One, she has been stuck in a room with the most well-liked person of her class, Alice, the one young girl who holds the largest portion of power over the others and could in turn with the flick of her fashionably, shortly trimmed hairdo influence the social politics of the school in whichever way she wills it, and two, it does not bode well for anyone who happens to earn her malice, which as it so happens pops out quite frequently. This makes the situation that she is in at the moment, their extremely close quarters, much more hazardous than she would prefer. For an extremely odd reason, the girl has taken a liking to Susan and has decided that they should become only the best of friends. This meaning, of course, that she is required to accompany her on any rebellious escapade or plot that she happens to hatch.

"Hmm-I'm not sure. That exam is coming up soon and I really wanted to-"

She yawns dramatically and sits upon the school papers lying on the desk in front of her roommate.

"God! You're _such_ a bookworm!" she exclaims, throwing her head backwards in pronounced exasperation. "Why do you have to be a wet blanket all the time?"

Susan can't help wincing at the words. She has been called those names a time too many before. At the old academy that she attended, in what seemed like a lifetime ago, they were used far more often than a proper "Susan" itself. She is reminded of a memory in which Edmund called her the very same thing and she smiles to herself, thinking of her dear brother.

Fingers are snapped before her face and Alice waves a hand between her eyes.

"Hullo! Are you even listening? I like you, Su, but if you're going to act that way all the time, then perhaps you'd be better off hanging around "Witchy Gretchen" and her lot."

Gretchen or "Gretchers", as she has been dubbed, is a classmate with an unfortunately disproportionate nose to a rather small, rounded face. The resulting effect is that, while she is by no means ugly, when one looks at her side-profile, the sharp point protrudes in a way that is hard to miss and it is in this way that the others cleverly pointed out that she seemed rather like a long-nosed witch. Her studious, serious nature improved this impression not by one fraction of an inch and her circle of quiet, unassuming friends also gained infamy by association. This all started long before Susan began to attend their school and she can't really understand much of it, but has never done anything to aid the targeted group either. She tries not to think about it when she eats supper and Alice decides to practice her aim with a couple of carrots and Gretchen's curls as a bulls-eye.

"Um, no thank you," she responds, laughing slightly as if this suggestion is indeed the most preposterous thing anyone ever heard while there is a sick, sinking sensation in her stomach and she is starting to feel quite despicable.

"Well! Come on then!" the ginger-haired girl calls to her as she skips to the doorframe of their room.

Susan looks back at her notes and the detailed homework beside it with regret. She was also in the process of responding to a long letter that Peter sent her at the beginning of that week and knows that, while it is post-day, she won't be able to reassure him of her well-being with a reply. She also knows, although she has never been to that particular back-alley before, that it's chief purpose is a location in which tongues can tangle, a kind of heavy-petting can occur, and cigarettes can be exchanged. Susan isn't keen on any of those things, but there will be certain consequences, an irreversible tarnishing of her reputation, if she refuses, which will be altogether unpleasant and the beginning of a slow descent down the social ladder to a point where she rested once upon a time which she didn't like at all. Besides, she tells herself, there will be no need to participate. She could go with the reward of being able to say that she did and merely occupy herself with something else. What that might be, she isn't sure, but she will, most definitely in fact.

"Alright," she says, leaving the table and swallowing down the sharp rise of guilt in her throat. "I suppose, if just once."

They start down the corridor and more girls, the other two accomplices of the Saint Finnbar's leader, join them. They stop suddenly before a door, not before the secret exit way that leads out of the grounds, and Susan isn't sure why.

"Before we go, there's something that needs doing."

It is pushed open a crack and a curly-haired form appears to be fast asleep under the covers of the bottom bunk bed inside. A feeling of outrage wells up inside of her as she watches their grinning faces.

"What-"

Someone's hand rudely shushes her and Alice leans in to whisper in her ear.

"I need me an English essay, see."

She motions her head towards a stack of papers upon the table of the room.

"Gretcher's been working on that all day, it's even tired her out now."

Susan watches the steady rise and fall of her classmate's chest with a growing dread. They come in closer and their collective eyes bore holes into her.

"Fetch it for me, will you?"

As they scrutinize her expression silently, Susan feels that she understands. This is a test, a ritual of acceptance. They want to see upon which side she will stand, whether she is truly one of them. And if she refuses, then it's over isn't it? Their suspicions would be confirmed then, wouldn't they? Everything would be crystal clear. Susan Pevensie really is just another fun-hating bookworm. She sensed the reluctant acceptance of Ellie and Bernadette, as Alice first excitedly introduced them. They see her true nature whenever she offers to lend her notes to the unlucky portion of the English school girls, who have been labeled too dull and plain to be befriended, worries incessantly over a skinned knee that Lucy has somehow earned or shies away from that particular group of pupils, who avidly discuss the best seating position in which to attain the best set of answers from the unsuspecting "brain" during their free periods before a class exam or concoct the cleverest schemes in which to smuggle cognac and bourbon past the barrier of the gates. Their awareness of it only waxed to dangerous proportions when a sharp tack was placed on Gretchen's stool and Susan, unable to ignore the roaring in her heard any longer, knocked it to the floor with fingers, trembling with the heat of an uncontrollable fire. Alice is really the last string holding her above those murky waters of unpopularity and mockery. If that connection snaps now, if it is undone, the next few years will be a sure, but slow hell, just like last time.

She takes a step forward and a hand from each one claps her on the back, a clear sign of approval.

There is a distant memory that comes to the forefront of her mind with unexpected force.

"If a person is willfully deceitful, selfish, greedy or prideful and lives with hatred in his heart, they will surely suffer at the end of it all, dear one. They will surely step off of the path that leads to me."

She shakes the thought away angrily. Susan hasn't heard that voice in a very long time.

He has neither come to comfort, nor shown any indication that he is with them.

Aslan has abandoned them.

More importantly, he has abandoned her.

She won't stop to consider what he would think of this.

He does not think of her.

* * *

><p>Susan Pevensie climbs the red velvet covered steps of the New York Theatre beside her mother and father with supreme confidence. From the point of arrival in America, not a week before, they have been perusing through silks, linens, and cottons in as many shops as possible while purchasing enough dresses to burst the largest wardrobe.<p>

_It isn't enough._

At present, she is wearing a stunning, azure, cap-sleeve frock, the finest sheer nylon stockings, and a charming, little, black, button-down coat. The eldest daughter of the Pevensie family is truly fashionable now. And why shouldn't she be? She is young and beautiful; in a way that would make any American woman turn green in envy and make others hide their faces in shame. It doesn't matter. Everyone loves her.

_It never is._

Susan presses her lips together, mindful not to smear the even coating of the scarlet lipstick that she has applied hours before. Make-up is such a wondrous thing! Why has she never thought of it before? Why not enhance that beauty to the point that no one can rival her? That all the boys must gaze in awe? One such male, in a smartly designed suit, is openly admiring her at the top of the staircase and she casts him a winning smile. She does the very same thing to the next, behind him, and all the ones after that. After the play is finished, she lets them converse with her. She allows them to come to closer, for their hands to linger on her skin, and lips to press against hers as well. Susan wills it so and every night passes with a new touch that has caressed her, a new man who has adored her.

_It never will be._

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><p>The night that she returns, Peter is the first to notice that something is wrong.<p>

It is nine o'clock and the siblings have been waiting eagerly for the Gentle for hours. She sweeps gracefully through the door and drops her bags upon the kitchen tile. Their parents are already upstairs, unpacking the luggage.

"Oh, Susan! We've all missed you so terribly!" Lucy exclaims, holding her arms out to embrace her sister. "I've so much to tell you!"

Susan breezes past the counter and pats her fondly upon the head as she walks by.

"Oh, do you, Lucy dear? Were you off on some kind of charming adventure again?"

Peter focuses upon the fingers that have just become tense in her right hand and the smile that doesn't quite crinkle her features or reach the corners of her eyes. Lucy frowns briefly, hurt at the rejection of the hug, but brushes it off in her excitement.

"_Yes!_ Edmund and I-"

Peter cuts off her speech with that special warm laugh which uniquely belongs to only him and crosses the room to his, painfully missed, sister.

"Now, Lucy, we can't unload it on her all at once. She's just got here."

He holds her close, for she is a part of him as much as Lucy or Edmund are, and she is rigid within his arms.

"What's wrong, Su?" he asks with a concern that comes naturally to the man, within the boy, the one who knows her best, whom practically raised her for fifteen years. "You're as stiff as an ice block!"

"I'm not sure," she murmurs, the barrier of ice solid around her heart. "I suppose, I'm tired."

He lets her go, but doesn't miss the wince when his lips land upon her forehead. There was a time when she would savor his affection, when she would seek him out on a stormy night or when she could not escape from the nightmares.

_She won't, not anymore._

They give her the space that they sense she needs and send her off to bed with many a kiss and a goodnight, but Susan does not sleep.

There is no peace for her soul.

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><p>In the morning, the boys have gone to the market and Lucy tells her of that mysterious land, the one that makes her weep sometimes in the darkness of the night.<p>

"And you wouldn't _believe _who we saw there! Caspian! Reepicheep as well-"

Her laughter is harsh and coarse, even to her own ears.

"Lulu," she drawls. "_Darling_, you aren't _really _still going on about that make-believe world, are you?"

Lucy has heard this once before, but not from her mouth. Her little sister has disbelief etched across her face and she seems more confused than she is shocked.

"Whatever do you mean, Susan?"

The look of betrayal in her eyes doesn't suit her, Susan observes.

She won't become prettier, acting like that.

"If this is a joke then it isn't a very funny one."

She flips back her long, tumbling, gleaming locks and proceeds to fasten two silver earrings to her earlobes.

"Joke? You're the one who's joking, not I. You should really get out a bit more, dearest. Grow out of these fantasies of yours. America really was very wonderful. The boys are all very dashing there. Once you're a little older, you should go as well-"

She can't spit the words out any longer, as she looks into those large blue eyes, which seem to hold an untold wisdom and which are gazing at her with a great sadness.

"Have you forgotten already? Have you broken your vow with him?"

Lightning shoots down her skeleton and her eyes shut of their own accord with the unexpected pain the questions bring her.

She remembers what once was.

"I will love you only, until the day I die," she said.

"I have always loved you," he responded, licking her cheek with that wonderfully rough tongue of his.

Her jewelry tinkles slightly as she turns her head to cover her face with a hand and her expensive, polka-dotted dress suddenly feels unbearably heavy upon her body.

She wants to rip it to pieces.

"The promise of a child, Susan," that inner voice, the one she both loves and hates, intimates to her. "Nothing, but childish dreams."

Her petite jaw clenches and she stands up abruptly from the lacy bedcovers.

"Grow up, Lucy. _I_ have," she tells her, with a firmness of which she didn't know she was able.

"Only a child runs away from the things that scare her," Lucy responds, all pity and compassion.

And Susan does run.

She runs far away from those all-knowing orbs which look through her and the lion which softly paws at the entry to her heart.

* * *

><p>She is eighteen and the world lies at her feet.<p>

She attends a prestigious university of which only the best, the highest sort of social circles surround her and then there are the _parties,_ marvelous dances and fascinating meet-ups every single evening. She has only just perfected the talent of witty, small talk and the older women tell her that she could be the greatest socialite that ever lived by the time she turns twenty. Susan puts on her lipstick, powders her cheeks, dabs perfume onto her neck and basks in the adoration of the masses. They don't know that she has an absurdly protective mother-hen of a brother, a righteous and just sibling who could once have boasted of singlehandedly negotiated peace between two countries, however imaginary they might have been, and a younger sister who loves more fiercely and more bravely than any person she's ever met. Some don't even know her last name happens to start with a "P", but that's fine. They believe that she's absolutely wonderful and that is enough for Susan. A new man warms her bed every week and it comes to her, as they are sated, asleep, and soundly snoring, that she doesn't know much about them either.

"I'm the most despicable creature that ever lived," she whispers to the silence.

"I don't care, I still love you," it replies.

* * *

><p>She is twenty-one and covered in a stygian, mourning shroud. People, who she's never met before in her life, weep endless rivers beside her.<p>

A tragedy, they call it.

Their backs shake with their heart-breaking sobs and Susan, once again, has to wonder at the powers of the love of her siblings, those "one-of-a-kind Pevensies". Exactly how many lives have they touched? Helen Pevensie hides her face in her husband's shoulder and the ex-soldier is seriously aggrieved as well.

A freak accident.

The funeral attendees watch the last surviving Pevensie daughter as silent tears slip down her cheeks and drip off of her chin and think to themselves that she is sad.

She holds her head higher.

They are wrong.

Susan knows better.

_How dare you_, she accuses, glaring at the cold sky. _How dare you take them without me?_

She is jealous; a petulant child left behind while her father has taken the others, who have behaved particularly well, to a fantasy fun-park.

It is nonsensical to grieve. She knows that they are quite happy, blissful in fact.

How could they not?

Susan is furious at them all, simply seething.

_ How dare you?_

"I'm coming as well," she declares, glaring at their names carved into the headstone. "Watch me, Peter. Just try and stop me."

And after she has thrown out all her dresses, after she has sold all her jewelry, after she has accomplished her goal of beating them at their own game and inspiring just as many individuals' souls; she does.

And when she enters, he is there, his mane just as beautiful and golden as she remembered, looking quite pleased with himself, and he has only one thing to say to her.

"I've been waiting."

* * *

><p>Susan <em>does <em>get a happy ending! Yaay! Well, at least in this story, she does.


End file.
